What's up with the phrase, "Still programming?" Would anyone think it odd for a 60-year-old physician to still be doctoring, or a 60-year-old lawyer to still practice law. Or for that matter for a 60-year-old artist or craftsperson to "still" pursue their craft.<p>Corporate culture embraces the notion of management as a profession. I think programming would benefit greatly from more of a tradecraft model, where leadership is provided by the master practitioner rather than the professional manager. In the alternate universe that's how we do it. The bottom line productivity boost is awesome. I don't know if it scales, but I don't care to scale.<p>-- 63-year-old full-stack web and machine learning programmer...living the dream
45. Still coding, probably until I die. Light years ahead of younger developers in the following:<p>* Writing less code<p>* Writing maintainable code<p>* Re-using existing code (requires reading existing code)<p>* Know how APIs should be written<p>* Knowing how to properly map associations<p>* Know when or when not to use another library<p>* Knowing when to tell a product manager to go back and do some more product managing<p>* Knowing when to say "No"<p>* Knowing how to determine what a stake holder actually needs vs. what they think they want<p>* Understanding that 8 hours today and 8 hours tomorrow is 10x better than 16 hours today.<p>* Saying "I don't know" when asked "How long will it take" or "When will it be done"<p>* Fighting against shitty processes<p>* Fighting FOR processes<p>* Forcing PMs to use software designed for the purpose of creating software instead of accepting requirements through email/slack/invision/zeplin/google docs/tool of someone else's choice
"StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?"<p>Not wasting time filling out online surveys?<p>I'm not even 40 yet and I realised online surveys were a waste of time years ago. :-)<p>A stackoverflow survey doesn't measure the answers of stackoverflow users. It measures the answers from the specific demographic of stackoverflow users who are inclined to answer surveys. Those demographics overlap but are not equal.
I'm 42, programming is the fun part of the job (meetings, nonsensical time estimates and travel tend to be worst part of the job). Had a computer my whole life (Vic-20, oh yeah!) I strongly agree with what others have said in the article: Keep learning new things. I did nothing but C++ for 13 years (console games) and felt like a dinosaur. Despite the fact that there are still (a few) C++ jobs out there, I made a point to avoid them. Did a python based app for a year (IPython is fantastic!). Did a GO app for a year (which was kind of interesting, only luke warm on the language for some reason). At the moment I am learning Elixir and Phoenix and still get the excited feeling when the program works. It is strange that such a well paid / interesting field has so few older people in it. One concern I have is that my hair is starting to turn grey so I think the HR process will get a bit trickier (planning on moving to more remote work so they can't see the grey :)).
I'm 71, I wrote a best-seller in the early 1980s (Apple Writer for the Apple ][), I still code regularly but not for income, so my circumstances might not be what the article focuses on. I write a lot of Python, JavaScript, some Java, I have a number of Android apps listed at the Google Play store -- all of them free, no ads (<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Paul+Lutus&h...</a>).<p>Why do I still program? Because I like programming. I never experienced serious burnout, probably because I didn't have to program for anyone else -- I was always my own boss.<p>Apropos the article's topic, I often visit StackOverflow but I never post anything there, I only read the inquiries of others, which invariably provide the information I need. This practice might make people like me essentially invisible.
".. However, StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?"<p>Obviously not on StackOverflow. Perhaps they have enough experience and knowledge to not need the site because they either know how to read tech books and sites to get the info they need when they have a problem using pre-existing docs, or conversely, are fully able to debug issues themselves.<p>That's what I do, anyway. (I'm 46)
Software development/engineering is still a young industry, most developer jobs really came about with the internet in the mid-90s on up and increasing every year. So the numbers will skew younger at least for a few decades.<p>The bulk of people that have been coding since jr/high school and college are around or in their 40s now. C++ was invented in mid 80s for instance and not really fully in taking over desktop apps for a few years, combined with the internet then browsers, from that everything today + mobile which is another growth area. People were pushed into management because there were minimal veterans in the early 90s/00s, and you could be a senior coder within a few years.<p>The ages will eventually skew up especially with GenY/Millenials being greater in numbers than Gen X who were really the first generation to fully have internet jr/high school/college on, and many went into development, older than that some switched but most had their path in life already going. Ages will skew older with the next couple generations as they age. When radio started everyone was young in it as well for many of the same reasons.
I like the thread here, but I'd like to point out that we shouldn't limit our check on ageism to the people who are "still coding".<p>If we want people in dead-end jobs and failing industries to have a chance to move forward in new ways, we need to willing to accept <i>qualified</i> "junior" engineers of all ages and backgrounds.<p>I have seen this sort of ageism in the interview process and it's tricky to constructively correct people in having different standards for 22 year-olds than they have for 32, 42, or 52 year-olds.
I'm 52, started writing code professionally in 1985. Started my career on 68K assembler. In the 90's I was a Windows SDK developer (then COM/ATL, etc.), In 1999 started a company but chose Linux and embraced FOSS and built a company on a Lamp stack (sold it in 2014).<p>The only thing that can hurt you in this industry is that you stop learning and stop growing. I tell my employees to always learn something new every month. Pick something cool, learn it. This industry changes too fast to stick in one area of technology. Two years ago, nobody was talking about Node.js as being "important", now you can't see a company or startup not looking for Node/MEAN stack developers -- that's how quick this industry moves.<p>But hey. I am old... I use Emacs (still), but have moved to Visual Code on my Mac (with Emacs bindings of course...). I do most of my work in the ZSH, but use Bullet Train and Powerline Shell... So I embrace "new" and am open to things that make it easier and better.<p>Personally? How do I keep pace being the old man? I take 3-6 months off and learn a new technology. What I mean about "learn" is that I actually build an app that's useful or used by customers (people). I don't just play with something, I learn it to become productive and then move to the next thing...<p>Right now, I've just got to the point of feeling "productive" in Elixir. Which I think is going to be the "game changer" on the full stack side and love functional programming (after being an OO guy for what, 25 years!?)... Elixir is my new love and haven't been this excited about a stack in a long time.<p>Learn, learn, learn... write code, keep your brain active. Age means nothing in this field other than when you show up for an interview and the rest of the employees are wearing Skinny Jeans and you've got Dockers on.<p>I like to call it "Dad coding".
I'm 50 and still writing new code and launching new apps. In fact, I've probably release more apps in the last 5 years that I did in my previous 25+ years of programming (started when I was about 18).<p>While I concur that I am not as energetic as I used to be in my 20's and 30's - i.e. I cannot do non stop 12 hour code marathons etc., I think my code these days is a lot more disciplined and well thought out, and better organised.<p>I will happily spend time to look at the latest and greatest bleeding edge technology or framework, but when it comes time to write 'money code', I usually fall back on tech that has been around for 5+ years.<p>My passion for coding has not diminished - I am still excited every time I sit down at the keyboard. As long as I feel that, I will keep coding or working around software.
Dave Cutler - 75.<p>Lead developer on VMS, NT and Azure. Working on the core of XBox up to couple of years ago (still is?).<p>I won't say what age I am when the article seems to think that 45 is relatively old, but Dave Cutler shows that there's no excuses. If you're good, you're good, young or old.
I expect one contributing factor to this statistic is the proliferation of software development over the past decade. As millennials get older, so too will this generation of coders and hackers. The mid-twenties image "software engineer" conjures, will keep getting older. I'm fascinated to see how this will make software engineering a less sexy job / will change tech culture among deveopers
Keep in mind that the industry is aging as a whole (and hopefully maturing in the process). So if you ask the question 10 years later, there will be a lot more developers in the 40+, 50+, 60+ buckets than today.
"The median U.S. worker is 42. However, StackOverflow’s survey on age shows that there are just about 13% of developers after 40. Where are the others?"<p>I think most of this is due to the simple fact that software development has been a steadily growing profession for decades. Thus, the "population pyramid" of software engineers will very much be a pyramid and older developers will be proportionally scarce. If you want to make meaningful predictions about your personal likelihood of staying in software development beyond a certain age, you'd need to slice the numbers differently.<p>I believe that once the number of software engineers stabilizes, the age distribution will become more similar to other fields. Some will leave the field during their career due to changes of interest or due to life throwing them curveballs. But a lot will stay.<p>I'm 43, BTW. Still find software development and tech enjoyable.
What about Linus Torvalds?
Born: Linus Benedict Torvalds, December 28, 1969 (age 47), Helsinki, Finland
I guess he's still coding, right? Does it count?
Lot's of scientists and engineers and physicians are still doing what they know best. These kinds of knowledge and skills do not go away with age, and since practitioners of these arts are constantly learning new things, and looking for better solutions to problems, people in these fields often work until the very day that death catches up to them.<p>Programmers tend to be just like these other STEM like professions. Although with age we tend also to broaden our horizons a bit, perhaps into genomics or massively scalable systems or new approaches to cyber security.
“Over 30 years, I had to relearn almost everything about every 4 years more or less. I work with a team of six developers from ages 48 to 56. All of us have totally retrained our skills from 3 to 8 times.” . I have been doing embedded coding for years, which does not need train myself every four years, but still, keep learning is the key, age plays its role, but not as important as keeping learning.
My father-in-law retired at 75; he was writing embedded systems for machines involved in chip manufacture.<p>I'm 56 now. I'm just going to go until I can't do it any more; 75 would be great. Writing software and working with hardware is pretty awesome.<p>Consider how fortunate we are, who have found successful professions that we enjoy -- many people don't get that opportunity.
57, I build and maintain 911 (911, E911, V911), Telematics, Alarm, PERS and custom SIP programming systems. On any given day my job is a software developer, dba, systems analyst, process analyst and data analyst, sysadmin. Not mention fire putter outer and consult with outside companies to best implement their requirements.<p>But I'd rather be out riding my motorcycle.
Eh? 40?!<p>Most of my developer colleagues are over 40. No one thinks less of them for it.<p>On the contrary, an experienced developer is someone who has at least a good fifteen years under their belt. That usually mean "over 40". That experience manifests in ways such as not reinventing the wheel (a favorite, unintentional pass-time for the young and inexperienced).
This whole topic is so interesting to me. Software programming is actually, in reality, a mind numbing process involving extremely repetitive actions. Thanks to Hollywood and the fact that technology is transforming our world (not programmers... technology) the myth of the programmer as an intellect has flourished. That is true for <i>most</i> programmers; there are brilliant programmer of all ages who make the tools the rest use, and that's another topic altogether.<p>The reality is that young programmers are popular not because they're brilliant, but because they are more willing to engage in repetitive tasks for long hours. The idea that older people don't have the intellectual chops is total BS; it's rather that as people get older they lose interest in unrewarding endlessly repetitive tasks. That is to say, they become more intelligent about how they are going to spend their time and their life.
I am early 40s and have been coding professionally for 25 years; I will never stop doing it as I like it and it keeps me up to date with my colleagues/employees so I can help them and support them where needed. I spend a lot less time worrying about frameworks, programming languages etc then I used to. I practically deliver things my companies need. In my spare time I program as well; working on formal verification, development tools & games. For me it is just creating something from nothing that drew me into programming the around 34 years ago and I have not found anything that works that powerful on me.<p>I notice, with every year passing, that I need less and less time actually behind my computer and typing to write more and better software. Which is great as I don't like the typing part all too much :)
52 here and code everyday, some for work, some for personal development, but most because I enjoy it. I am also manage a security engineering team for a living. I've been coding since I was 12ish. Most of what I code in now is Python for work and Swift and Java for mobile development, which I find a hell of a lot of fun. Mostly making tutor apps for my kids studies.<p>What I find interesting is that when I walk into a meeting with younger developers they immediately assume I only know cobol or rpg and not the various stacks I work with. Once we start working with them on securing their code they realize what experience brings to the table. It's hard to believe that there are still some programmers out there that don't know what cross site scripting is, or how to prevent SQL injection etc.
Am I in the top 13% at Stackoverflow? I had no idea, but I'm going to use this as a new source of pride, just because I can.<p>I don't consider 40+ very old for a programmer. My father was 65 when he retired from professional programming, and at first continued working on an open source project (though that now seems to have stopped). I've always seen plenty of older programmers. Only at the few startups where I worked was I one of the oldest programmers, but even there the demographics get more balanced as the company grows.<p>The weird stories about Silicon Valley's love for inexperienced programmers where 30 is apparently old, sound weird and alien to me. I get better as I get older and more experienced.
I'm reluctant to weight in as I'm only 36 and well not terribly impressive. However as the owner of a company I must say programming is so much more relaxing than dealing with people... well mainly just people external of our company and family.<p>There is something extremely cathartic about programming. I'm not sure I can ever fully describe it. All I know is when I have to talk to a customer or partner I occasionally think... god I wish I was programming right now... even in Perl or PHP... anything.<p>The irony is I actively seek conversation as I always want to improve our company but about 20 minutes in and I start feeling uncomfortable.<p>The thought of never programming again is a scary thought to me.
I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog post (<a href="http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/" rel="nofollow">http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech...</a>) that was widely read.
I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of technology.
I'm 57 and I "Can't Stop Coding" as I'm still having too much fun. Whenever I stop having fun... I change programming jobs. I wrote about this in a blog post (<a href="http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/" rel="nofollow">http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech...</a>) that was widely read.
I will say, however, that I have seen a lot of developers become obsolete mostly because they stayed with the same company (and programming language) for too long or ignored opportunities to stay abreast of technology.
I'm 51, still codeing almost every day and I use SO a lot. I used to contribute more, when it started, but lately use it more as a reference.<p>Didn't know about the survey - would have probably filled it out, actually.<p>I feel it's pretty easy to keep up with new technologies when necessary, since I don't have to relearn the basics and almost always have a reference point as in "oh X is similar to what we used to call Y in Z".<p>One huge shift for me is distribution - as the browser is now almost capable as a general UI it's easier to not worry about OSes, installers, versioning, etc. This is true even for people who primarily don't work on web apps.
I have to wonder how well the SO survey reflects the overall dev population. I could imagine, for example, more experienced devs spending less time on SO, or being less likely to respond to a surveys in general.
60 in 2017 => 20 in 1977. How many programming jobs were there in 1977? Plenty, sure, but not to the extent we see today. Is it really suprising that a brand-new industry is also full of young people?
creak. 69 here, still employed and coding etc, started in 1967, spent too many years having to make it up as I went along to specialize. If anything that specialty might be embedded systems, but not only. I would definitely guess my demographic is small. I find SO sometimes useful where my Google-fu fails me, but every so often I also get to ask the developer of the language/whatever directly instead. We're all about that age now, and it's a small and shrinking community.
For anybody who attending a community college or University for technical courses, you would have realized that overwhelming majority of your Professors (aka computer scientists) are 40+ with a large chunk being 55+<p>I think human beings have infinite capacity to grow intelligent - that is until our bodies start shutting down (e.g. Alzheimer) but nobody knows at what age that happens (it can happen when a person is in their 20s or 80s or may never happen until one day the person simply stops breathing).
50 and coding. There's nothing more satisfactory that carefully crafted code. Or maybe just releasing something and mostly never looking back because it. just. works.
41. I learned programming when I was 8 (basic on a C64) and I have as much fun programming today as I've ever had. Besides, there's no doubt I'm a better programmer today than I was 5 or 10 years ago and I keep learning new things.<p>Actually, I'm more worried about ageism than about the decline of my abilities. I work in academia, but I wonder if I could get a software engineer position if I wanted to.
Logical analysis of a problem and its implementation into a computer system is a "high skill". There are programmers who can do the job and then there are people who actually innately think logically.<p>I'm betting the older devs (like myself) are the ones who have had that innate logic skill since they were born.<p>Everyone else moved on to management.<p>Just a theory.
Hey... I'll soon be 50. I've been an engineer, architect, and a VP. I still write code. And why would I stop? Writing code is fun.<p>Does a driver stop driving at age 40? Or a Dr. stop being a Dr.?<p>I can identify bad patterns both in code and designs as well as teams that escape many younger engineers and managers.
Putting aside the question of what reality the 13% statistic in this survey might be representative of... When one looks at how much this industry has grown since today's 40 year-olds entered the job market, my surprise at the 13% number is at how high it is, not how low.
My goal is to be the last programmer standing who started on IBM punch cards ;)<p>By the way, I was at an Azure Bootcamp on Saturday (great event!) and there was a 70+ year old there with his laptop doing the labs.<p>Programming and exercise are two of the three best ways to stay young.
I'm 38 and have coded ~30 years, professionally for half that. That's 15 years into a career of perhaps 45 years. A third! I can't believe I'm even worrying about being "old" in the business.<p>It's not a young man's game.
I started coding after 40, as I needed the skill set to do my other job properly (molecular biologist). Love it, with the added advantages my job is more secure and higher paying.<p>Don't think I'll be stopping any time soon.
49, write code every day. The whole SO thing mistifies me. I really think the survey skews, because "graybeards", don't waste time filling out surveys and they know how to RTFM to get answers.
I came across a graybeard in an interview recently who refused to take a coding challenge and cited his experience instead. He did not advance through the interview process.